


Solace

by Skylark



Series: HSWC 2013 [23]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Absent Parents, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen, Gift Giving, Strider Manpain, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-08
Updated: 2013-09-08
Packaged: 2018-01-08 23:40:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1138831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skylark/pseuds/Skylark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You need a shower and you need a drink and you need arms around you, holding you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> [Prompt:](http://hs-worldcup.dreamwidth.org/15805.html?thread=2549437#cmt2549437) "God?" "Yes?" "Are my parents ever coming home?" -a softer world

“Good morning, mom,” you mumble, eyes still scabbed over with the crust of sleep.  
  
“This is going to be hard for me to tell you,” your mother replies, and you wince, flipping the DVD to the next chapter without needing to look. It's too early for that one. You're just this side of conscious, hung over and exhausted. You need a shower and you need a drink and you need arms around you, holding you. “In time, you will come to understand,” your mother says. “I love you, Roxy. Never forget that.”  
  
No matter how much you drink, you can't disobey your mother. You can't forget.  
  
\--  
  
“By now I'm sure you've found them,” your brother says. “It's time for you to take up my shitty sword mantle, little man. Fight the good fight.”  
  
You nod once, mouth set in a firm line. You're eight years old, holding live steel in your small hands. Your palms are already callused; you live a hard life, it's burned all the softness from you.  
  
Your brother moves through the movements, says it's the first kata of many, that he's recorded all of them for you. _Don't rush,_ he tells you, _do it right._ The second time through you slow the recording down so that you can mimic him, keeping one eye on your reflection as he's suggested.  
  
You watch it over and over. Over and over, until the afterimages of his smooth bladework are burned behind your eyelids. Over and over, until you can carry his voice in your head up to the roof, hold him inside of you, speaking to you, training you as you build your strength in the blazing sun.  
  
 _Make me proud,_ he says.  
  
\--  
  
You dream about her sometimes, but you can't remember her face when you awake. You know that her favorite color is pink, and that she loves cats (as well she should), and that her hair is a curled mess of ringlets that will straighten in time, just as yours did. You know she'll devour everything you put before her: science, magic, writing, technology. Alcohol.  
  
When you shove the vodka into Dave's arms so that can help you carry it upstairs, he raises an eyebrow but remains uncharacteristically silent. When he first met you, you were a functional drunk—sharp-tongued, coordinated—but a drunk all the same. Still, the warm soft buzz of alcohol was a source of comfort when all else had abandoned you.  
  
Your daughter's life will be hard beyond imagining. You will give her weapons, mental and physical, you will prepare her; but you cannot give her solace, except for this.   
  
It will have to do.  
  
\--  
  
It takes you a full year, and it's the last thing you make for him, the first gift he'll receive. It's an eight-hour mix full of samples from everything you can get your hands on—your movies, your voice, news clips, your favorite songs, sitcoms, nursery rhymes. Subliminal messages whispering what you want to say but don't have the balls to. The closest you'll ever get to an autobiography.   
  
The end result is hushed, quiet and shifting but never quite breaking the surface. It's meant to lull him to sleep—you get a feeling he'll have a hard time with that—to keep the darkness at bay. You're a shitty excuse for a human and a worse excuse for a guardian, and you'll die not saving anyone, not with your movies, not with your strife specibus. You know there's no a way a mixtape, no matter how brilliantly well-constructed or long, can replace you. But you build it anyway.  
  
“I love you,” you mumble into the microphone, and then shuffle it into the track until it vanishes. You know he'll still hear it.  
  
Everything you've ever made was created for an audience of one.


End file.
